It may be obvious to anyone who has spent time outside this winter but rainfall on the central Oregon coast for the first three months of 2024 is running nearly 50 percent above average.
However, according to weather watchers for YachatsNews, the usual corresponding increase in high winds has been absent so far this winter.
Other than two unusually warm days on March 15-16, it’s just been wet, wet, wet.
The key to local rain amounts is the much higher numbers when you move into the foothills of the Coast Range.
Jim Adler lives three miles up the Yachats River and has been measuring rainfall for 15 years. In March he recorded 12.85 inches of rain for a three-month total of 51.16 inches. Except for the 61.08 inches in 2017, it’s the highest three-month total in his years of record-keeping – and 49 percent above his usual three-month average of 34.13 inches.
Just five miles farther up the Yachats River, Bob Williams measured 16.27 inches of rain in March for a three-month total of 65.90 inches – 14 inches more than Adler’s near-record amount.
Closer to the ocean, of course, rain measurements are much smaller – but still big compared to averages.
At the city of Yachats wastewater treatment plant, city staff recorded 9.25 inches of rain in March for a three-month total of 34.73 inches. The city’s three-month rainfall average over 10 years is 27 inches.
Weather watcher Adam Altson lives just west of the treatment plant and measured 9.33 inches of rain in March, giving him 33.77 for the year.
“That’s my highest three-month total to start the year, just barely topping the 33.74” of 2021,” he said.
Two miles north of Yachats, Donald Tucker is also seeing his records fall.
He recorded 10.54 inches of rain in March and has 42.44 inches for the year – which except for 2017 is his second-highest three-year amount in 19 years of record-keeping.
Julie Bailey, who lives at the 200-foot elevation level of Radar Road in Yachats, measured 11.07 inches of rain in March and has 38.99 inches for the year – 10 inches more than she had at this time last year.
March did have another notable weather occurrence – a two-day burst of warm weather.
Altson recorded a temperature of 78.2 degrees on March 15. It was 77 degrees at Tucker’s house that day. Despite the rain, Bailey recorded seven days in March with high temperatures over 60 degrees, including 74.6 degrees on March 15 and 75.6 degrees on March 16.
Now, about the wind. Or the lack of it this winter.
Altson decided to take a crack at quantifying what he believes is a lack of strong winds this winter – which he said would be a gust of 50 mph or more. That could be a good thing, of course, depending how you view such stuff.
“This winter I’ve measured five gusts at 50 mph or stronger,” he said. “My average number of 50 mph gusts in a given winter is 62. A couple of winters were right around 100 gusts of 50 mph or higher. This goes back to the winter of 2013-2014. The next lowest number of strong gusts was 26, in the winter of 2019-2020.”
April could still see storms with high winds, Altson said, “but as of now the number of strong gusts this winter is remarkably low for us, especially in light of how much rain we’ve received.”